Big UK managers' retail funds underperform in 1999

Retail balanced funds run by Mercury, Phillips & Drew, Schroder and M&G have finished the 1990s on a dismal note following another year of severe underperformance.

The damage has been done by a fourth quarter which has seen tech stocks surge ahead of the field. It looks more than likely that institutional balanced funds will have yet again underperformed the indices in 1999, although their performance does not always correlate with retail funds. Most managers are coy about how well their institutional funds have done...